Finding the bright side in the dark.

I've found the best thing about laryngitis. It's going out into the kitchen, in the middle of the night, wearing headphones, not turning any lights on, having a groove in the dark, singing along at the top of your lungs to your mp3 player.

No-one can hear you! It's brilliant! It's like being home alone, but, we'll I'd say it happens less rarely, but this is the first time I've ever had laryngitis, whereas I've been home alone plenty of times, so there goes that theory. Oh well, it happened tonight, and I was loving it sick. That's the important thing.

Anyway, before I was being Bruce Springsteen, I actually got a little bit of quilting done, just boring wavy lines, but yay progress. Until the bobbin ran out, and I stopped. Because clearly, my sewing machine wanted me to.

ZOMG.

Although Joe Nichols thinks tequilla makes her clothes fall off, it's actually the fact that Joe Nichols is going to be at the Deni Ute Muster that's making my clothes want to fall off.

Also, I think my ovaries might have exploded. Awks.

WARNING!

So, when I drink, I usually drink cider. Strawberry cider is my favourite but it's expensive so I usually stick to pear cider, which is known as perry. But my brain of course hears that and starts sing that subway jingle, the peri peri chicken, peri peri chicken, peri peri chicken chicken sub one.

I'd just like to warn you all, in case you ever end up drinking with me, and I end up singing this. Also, I'd like to apologise to anyone who knows that ad and now has that stupid damn jingle stuck in their head. Me too. Sympathy, dudes.

The good, the bad and the shiny...

The good: New episodes of True Blood drop on Mondays in Australia (since we're a day ahead of America) and drunk Sookie was brilliant but, even more importantly, this is the week when I get a new episode of White Collar! The only way this could get better is if someone could put Magic Mike on the internets for me.


The bad: Tonight, in the car, on the way home, The Dance* by Garth Brooks came on. And though those who know about all the ex-boyfriend weirdness that's been going on might think that my having a little cry to myself was to do with that, it wasn't. You only get one Garth song, and he got Friends in Low Places*. The Dance was how I felt about Honeycat, and tonight I found myself missing her. I guess the fact that I spend more time hanging out with the yabby than the dog means I need a pet of my own.

The shiny: On Thursday I went to Target to get a couple of things, and while I was there I saw a little boy, maybe 5 years old, and his RM Williams belt buckle was bigger and shinier than my RM Williams belt buckle (admittedly, mine is also a kids one) and when I was a bit tipsy on Thursday night I was thinking to myself "well, that just will not do". So I went on the internets and found this one. And it is big and very very shiny. Admittedly, I need to find a belt to go with it, but that shouldn't be too hard. Probably quite expensive, but not actually difficult.

*...for a moment all the world was right, how could I have known, that you'd ever say goodbye? And now, I'm glad I didn't know, the way it all would end, the way it all would go... Our lives are better left to chance; I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance...


**...well, I guess I was wrong, I just don't belong, but then, I've been there before; Everything's all right, I'll just say goodnight and I'll show myself to the door... Hey, I didn't mean, to cause a big scene, just give me an hour and then, well I'll be as high as that ivory tower, that you're livin' in...

Saying something.

There's something to be said for lying on the floor in front of the fire listening to songs you haven't heard in ages, and staring at the roof thinking about shit, and that something is: I should do it more often.

I had a lot of options for tonight. A couple of different invites out, or drinking on my lonesome, or even sewing. But I think I made the right choice, spending a couple of hours reading random wikipedia articles and eating baked beans. And then taking to youtube to find all those songs that have slipped out of my regular rotation. The Youth Group and the Snow Patrol and the Coldplay and the Dr Hook.

Actually, apart from roadtrips (which are a brilliant excuse to do pretty much nothing but listen to music for 5 hours) I think the last time I did this was easter, when it was 1am on the beach. It's a shame. I'm so used to multitasking - to crochet as I watch tv, to sew with music in the background, to read while cooking (I'm pretty hardcore) that I don't take as much time to think and reflect and just be, quietly, as maybe I should.

See, whenever I'm being me, I tend to be almost obnoxiously me. As me as I can be. I'm usually me-ing my little heart out, reveling in the feeling of my me-ness, because it's damn awesome, if I do say so myself. I'm not ashamed of it, admittedly I rarely notice it, and I really don't mind it. But I suppose there's also something to be said for introspective me too.

And that something is, she has fabulous taste in music.

My favourites this week.

It occurred to me today that I've been doing favourite things on Thursdays and Fridays lately. It doesn't matter, hell, having two days of good things should be twice as good, right?

So while we're on the theme of twos, I'm gunna go with my two favourite songs at the moment.



Feel Alright - Steve Earle



Good Times - Charlie Robinson

Crossed some stuff off my to-do list.

It took me about 4 hours, but it may just turn out to be the single greatest thing I've ever made.

Everything.

Tonight, I didn't go to the gym, because a pimple has formed behind my right ear, and I wear those headphones that clip over your ears, so, um, ouch. It's a nice change though, usually my problem with going to the gym is that my feet hurt.

And did I use my early night home to get much much sewing done? Well, no.

Falling Pinwheels is half quilted.

Though not very well. Still, better than nothing, and lets just say I meant to make it that wrinkly in places.

And you can't see it so much from the front - darker fabrics and all that.

I'm finding it interesting too how I very much prefer rock or party music when I'm quilting as opposed to slower, more ballady stuff. Lady Gaga, Pink, Selena Gomez, Matchbox Twenty and even a bit of LMFAO.

Oh, and this song.



This is my new favourite anything everything song.

I put that warning there for a reason...

Do you wanna know what I did tonight?


Warning, contains ya mum jokes. And obscure bogan references.

NYE lessons.

It's not that bad working till 10.30 NYE. There'll be very few customers, and most of them will be drunk co-workers coming in to say hi. If one of them is your manager, and she's drunk, ask her if you can slack off. Mine said yes...

5 inch heels are bad. Pretty, but bad. Mine were pretty enough, and only slightly bad enough, that I forgive them. This rarely happens with heels. I have a small blister. This happens often. Pack bandaids.

If you happen to be out and about on NYE with the only good friend of yours who would recognise your ex-boyfriend, at a distance, from behind, and you happen to both spot him in the same instant, laugh uproariously for the next 3 minutes. The kind of laughter you'd do if there was only 3 minutes worth of oxygen left in the world and you wanted to use it the right way. This may need to be explained to the guy you're with, who won't get why the slightly lame joke he just made got the best response ever.

Fireworks are pretty.

Groups of people (especially drunk people) are terrible at making decisions. It's much easier if you just tell them all what to do. Cheerful drunk people appreciate direction, especially if the directions lead them to more drinks. Grumpy drunk people should be left at the kerb.

Sad songs are good. "I know this room, I've walked this floor" from hallelujah, when walking past your old high school, slightly tipsy, in the middle of the night, is particularly good. Angie Hart's "Blue" is good no matter the occasion. Sad songs in the presence of one of your best friend's exes, when she's off making out with someone else and he's not over her, are bad. Except Angie Hart's "Blue" since it's about accepting being alone. Unfortunately, while it's very good, it doesn't have magical powers, so you'll still have to listen to him go on about how he can't get over her.

Holly Williams' "Sometimes" (I wish I was a fine wine, I wish I were a good drug, and hey if I were Jesus, maybe I could heal all of us..) would be a good song in this occasion. "Empty Chairs" by Don McLean is a bad choice.

Gutters are for sitting in while looking at the stars and quoting Oscar Wilde on facebook. This gives the drunker members of your party time to catch up.

Just because it was in the low 30s during the daytime doesn't mean it's going to stay warm into the nighttime. Pack a nice cardi, or you'll have to wear the hoodie in your gym bag. Pack a quilt too. Everybody loves quilts.

Oh, and if I could tell the world just one thing, it would be, that we're all okay. Thanks Jewel.

Happy New Year Everyone. It doesn't look all that different to the old one, but the fireworks at changeover time were pretty.

I am a dull and uninteresting person.

I know that music aficionados say that the richest sound comes from vinyl. I know that the best method of digital compression and storage for audio is FLAC. I know that I much, much prefer being able to download an album in 17 seconds. I know that it took me 3 minutes, and the assistance of one of my sisters to work out how to merely open the one remaining cassette player in our house today.

I didn't know that cassettes ran two channels of audio. Or maybe I just hadn't thought of it. Cassettes were a dying breed when I was in my formative music years, but I was there for them. My first ever album was on cassette (it was Hanson. The ones that sang MmmBop. My favourite song was Yearbook.) I can remember friends bringing over their cassettes and CDs and making mix tapes. You couldn't do that in 17 seconds - you did it real time, having one play in slot 1 while you recorded in slot 2. 

Today I didn't make a mix tape. Today I did the reverse. Six weeks ago I wrote about a song called The Melbourne Cup which I couldn't find anywhere. My sister (the same one who can remember how to open a cassette player*) told me that it was on the Home Among the Gum Trees cassettes we had when we were little. I looked on eBay, and there was one lonely copy available. I bought it. "That's excellent," said Casey. "You can put it all on the computer for us and then give it to Nanna Joy for Christmas."

So it's on the computer, in 25 minute blocks of 7 songs per side. Digitized by plugging an audio cable from the headphone jack of the almost-never-used sound system in the lounge to mic jack of mum's laptop, and pressing record in my music editing software, and waiting 25 minutes before flipping the cassette. Each channel of audio is different, and I'm breaking it down into little bits by listening to the beginning and end of each song through my headphones, and yeah, one ear is hearing different things to the other.

It's not beautiful sound. There's a lot of noise in the background. Not actual noise, of us putting up our Christmas tree, which we finally did tonight at about 11pm because it was the only time all six of us were home, but the faint buzzy cracklyness of the cassette.

Weirdly, even though I'm listening to it through the sound card on a computer, it feels soothing. Familiar. Songs I haven't heard in 15 years, from a cassette 25 years old. I wonder if it's because of the cracklyness. I'm planning on having a go at cleaning it up some other day, but maybe I shouldn't. Maybe it's important.

Also, I have the worst Deja Vu of my life. Not just cause I'm listening to songs from when I was a kid - I don't think I ever listened to these songs at this house, just in Dad's ute or on the houseboat. But I feel as if I've sorted this audio before. Maybe just because it's taken me the last 4 hours to get halfway through.

Anyway, if any of you remember any of these songs, or maybe want them, or came here cause you too realise that, for reasons beyond your control, your identity is tied up in some songs sung three decades ago and now unavailable to anyone not lucky enough to do the right eBay search on the right day, message me and I'll send them to you.

Home Among The Gumtrees - Bullamakanka

Old Man Emu - John Williamson

Ridin' - Smoky Dawson

The Gondiwindi Grey - Johnny Greenwood

Click Go the Shears - The Hawking Bros

Redback on the Toilet Seat - Slim Newton

I was only Nineteen - Redgum

Downunder - Men At Work

Put Another Log On The Fire - Bill & Boyd

Little Boy Lost - Johnny Ashcroft

I'm The Sheik from Scrubby Creek - Chad Morgan

Theme from Picnic at Hanging Rock - Paul Lennon

Tenterfield Saddler - Peter Allen

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda - The Bushwhackers

Our Don Bradman - (No artist listed)

The Wild Colonial Boy - Smoky Dawson

Waltzing Matilda - The Sundowners

Theme From Rush - Brian May and The ABC Showband

The Melbourne Cup - The Hawking Bros

Santa Never Made it to Darwin - Bill & Boyd

Flash Jack from Gundagai - The Bushwhackers

The Ettamogah Pub - Ray Kernaghan

Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport - Rolf Harris

Come On Aussie Come On - Frankie Davidson

The Dog on the Tuckerbox/Road to Gundagai/Back to Yarrawonga (Medley) - The Sundowners

Theme From Cash & Co - The Bushwhackers

I Still Call Australia Home - Peter Allen

As for craft, today I did none whatsoever.

*The stop button is also the open button.

The Sound of White...

I've been starting to think lately that I should be buying white quilting cotton by the bolt - first there was the pinwheels, then the pavement quilts, and then today I realised that you can sash a disappearing nine patch so it looks like one of those stained glass quilts, except white. And I had a bundle of fabrics that I've had for longer than I've been quilting, but they're all fat quarters which does limit your options a bit - I'd considered seeing if I could shoehorn them into a pavement quilt but I just didn't think it would look right with the two big squares being different prints. Still, disappearing nine patch quilt, that can be done with fat quarters. 

Most of the fabrics in question came form a Fabric Traditions bundle I got at Spotlight a couple of years back. In case you didn't know, Fabric Traditions is a company that ONLY does pre-cuts. You can't get yardage. Which is a shame, since the brown fabric in this quilt is probably my favourite print EVER. There was no yellow in the bundle, but that was okay because the one from Eden by Lila Tueller fits in very nicely, and they stock it at Stitch and Knit, so I went to get some. While I was there I decided that the blue I had was too wishy-washy so I swapped it out for some from the Spirit range, another Lila Tueller one. I bought some pink repro on-point-check to trade in for the pink that was in the bundle, but when I went to Spotlight I changed my mind AGAIN and got some of the pink and orange on point check from the new DS range instead. And I swapped one of the greens for the blue and green check from the previous DS range.

Even though NOvemeber didn't really stop me buying anything, it would appear that I needed to get over it by having a December 1st blow out. Still, they came together very nicely, as shown in this unfinished progress piccie.

It needs the sashing between the blocks themselves done. But it's later than I though - My watch needs a new battery and it turns out it's not still only 1.30 and I'm not making the amazing time I thought I was.

Oh, and if you don't know the song in the title, it's by Missy Higgins. Get amongst it.

Stuff!

Toss up between Favourite Things Fridaying and a regular post... Hell, why not do both?

So, Friday. I love Fridays. Even though I work 50% of weekends, I never work Fridays. Fridays are great.

The post office is pretty awesome too. Today they gave me a big envelope with some John Deere fabrics in it, which I have mixed emotions about, because I was raised in a Deutz and New Holland dealership, and John Deere are kinda like the enemy, but hey, no Agtron fabrics and a pregnant farm girl bestie who wants quilts for her unborn mean I gotta get what I can. And the man at the post office let those of us who were only picking up a package sneak to the front of the line, which was damn near out the door. So I thank him for that.

I love DVD commentaries. I found my Buffy DVDs  last night and I've been a little bit commentary mad today... I've watched about nine of them.

I love going to a shop and finding something you weren't expecting but had been unconsciously hanging out for. For those who, like me, have been waiting almost a decade to get toward the end of Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn Chronicles, book 6 is out.

I love the movie Sweet Home Alabama. Just because.

I like plopping a quilt over my head and being a blanket monster. Even when I'm the only one still awake in the house, it makes me happy.

I like having lots and lots of scissors. I buy mine for $1.50 from cheap as chips so that I can lose them as often as I want.

I like the song "Are You Ready" by Fatty Gets a Stylist. If you're an Australian resident, you might know it from the Prime/Seven adverts. And it's actually sung by Kate Miller-Heidke, who also sings the brilliant Last Day on Earth, even though those two songs are pretty much as far apart on the spectrum as you can get.

My other favourite song this week is "Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5. Only because the letter o is probably the prettiest letter (I also like circles), and they manage to fit ten of them into the word "moves".

I like shorts. See Sunday nights post for why. I've half made 3 more pairs since then, including a stripey pair and a batik pair.

I like fish. I've liked fish all week - I had to have tuna earlier in the week because Dad hadn't been fishing, and then I got some flake from the fish and chip shop, but it was terrible. Dad finally bought some home this morning so I had it for lunch, and it was excellent. Fish tastes best when it was still swimming yesterday.

I like achieving something, even if it's only a little thing. The bits of ribbon I pinned to some bag pieces last night are now handles. Yay!

I like spontaneously making an unnecessary quilt. I was in Spotlight today, the clearance fabrics were $4 a metre, there were some niceish green and red ones, and I needed to make something to have a go at quilting with wool batting again with.

My camera is refusing to take an accurate photo, probably because it's nearly 4am and it also thinks it's a phone, even though it almost never makes calls.

So it's one of the laziest and simplest designs I've ever done (my quiltmath: (21+3)÷3=8) but it only took me a couple of hours. It's about 98x115cm, and really, I think that wool batting isn't something that's going on this list.

What is on the like list though, it the obelus. it's been around since 1659. you might know it as the division symbol that I used just there in my quilt maths. It's plural is obeli. I like interesting pluralisations. I also like putting in a s where an American (such as my spell checker) would put a z.

I like mentos. Preferably the orange ones. I like crystal beads. I like glitter. I like fluro colours. I like 10c petrol vouchers. I like the mini pavlova cases you can get from Woolies and scoff till you're sick. I like men's watches. I like having spare batteries for my phone. I like the headphones that sit over your ears instead of inside them. I like good nail files, and having one there when you need it. I like magnets. I like my electric blanket.

I like typing. Well, not really, but I like saying stuff. I like saying I like stuff. Cause I do. It may not be big, epic stuff, but I like little stuff.

And if anyone wants to know what I want for Christmas, type miniature into eBay. I like miniature small stuff even more than metaphorical small stuff.

Where were you?

It's a not so bad...

If there is one good thing about hand sewing, it's that it's very easy, physically, to unpick. You still feel like a failure when you're doing it, but the difficulty is in exact reverse proportion to when you've done it by machine. I'm so used to the whole "it takes just a second to sew, and 35 minutes to unpick" thing that you get when you make a mistake on the machine that for it to be the opposite feels weird.

Still, my revised lace placement is only about quarter of the length of the old one, so really, it's not like I've created any more sewing to be done (since I was only half done to begin with) Yay for fractions!

Other than that, I have packed 95% of the stuff I need to, and plenty of stuff I don't* - all that remains is to find my bathers (yay 4 star hotel with indoor heated swimming pool) and the jeans that are currently in the dryer, but I'll be wearing them in the car on the way up so I don't know that they count. I've charged up the cameras and the palm pilots and picked about half my music that I want for my hour of designated stereo time - here's a question for you all: hard rock covers of classic country songs, sacrilege, or a clever, sneaky underhand way to have country music playing in the car without the driver knowing it? He's quite insistent that no country is to be played, but you'd be surprised how well "Goodbye Earl" by The Dixie Chicks translates. Hell, boy beats up girl, girl and friends murder boy is practically standard emo-song fare, just, you know, cooler when it's upbeat and contains a bit of nah-nah-nah-nahing. I've added it to my hour of music just to see Meagan's face when she hears it.

*I was feeling really good about not having packed a whole heap of unnecessary stuff until I found myself looking in a cupboard and thinking, "hmmm, should I pack that tent? I might need it..." (it's okay, I'm not taking the tent)

Forever Young

If I could only listen to one song for the rest of my life, it would be this one.

I fell in love with this song when if first came out. After the surprise commencement of my single life, the love didn't wane, but it was a little bit too raw - it felt a bit like the song was stuck in a time and a place, and I wasn't there any more. But songs are one of the few areas in which the "absence makes the heart grow fonder" idiom runs true, and now that it's back on high rotation in my life, I hope it doesn't get left behind again.

Never seem to find, what I'm looking for...

I'm feeling so impatient that I could have a jumpy uppy downy foot stomping balled fists tantrum right now.

Buuut... I have no idea what I'm impatient for. Whatever it is, I want it, and I want it right now.

Maybe it's for the webpage with the song lyrics I was going to post between lines of actual typing. That's taking bloody forever, but I don't think that's it.

I think it's that my life still hasn't picked up from after the new carpet. Just because there's bookshelves, doesn't mean they're attached to the wall, and just because I have lots and lots of fabric, doesn't mean it's not stuck out in the shed still. Just because I have planned stuff, doesn't mean I can get started on it. And it's driving me insane. I'm struggling to find time for sewing between work and two social lives and when I do find time, I think to myself "Do I want to go out to the shed and find the fabric I need?" I really don't, and I know I don't. It was hard to pack up, and I found myself regularly wishing for it to just be done already, but putting it all back is feeling like it might almost be an insurmountable task, like maybe all those times I took holidays with the intent to clean my room I was doing it the wrong way around, and I really need some holidays just to put my room back together. To put myself back together.

God, that sounds pretentious. Imagine though, how much worse it would have been with some 80s rock lyrics in there. Here I Go Again by Whitesnake. My "new" song of the moment. I'm really really loving it. Like, on constant repeat in the car, loving it.*  

"I don't know where I'm goin, but I sure know where I've been..."

"An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time, but here I go again..."

And a bit where it transitions from soulful, clenching your fist power ballad to epic 80s rock by means of a nice little drum solo... It really is fast highway driving perfection.

(But a word of warning though, if you get a little too into the drum solo and start banging on your steering wheel, your horn will toot. If you do this in the driveway, even if everyone in the house is asleep, you will feel epically embarrassed.)


*I discreetly turn repeat off when someone else is in the car, lest they think me weird. But I know it's folder 4, track 28, so I can find it again.

Crossing fingers and toes.

I have pretty much left quilting by the wayside as I work on my mp3 collection. I feel bad about it, but on the other hand, I really am starting to feel like I'm getting somewhere. Which is good because it almost makes up for the fact that it's really really boring and I'm not gunna get a pretty blanket out of it. Instead I'm harnessing plans for a super amazing portable jukebox that can plug into the nearest sound system, maybe run from my tablet. Which I have to send off for a replacement charger for, because apparently some other peoples' have spontaneously combusted. Maybe from sheer awesomeness, but more likely an electrical fault.

I was thinking I might maybe do the little pinwheels tonight but then I didn't get home till 12.30 because Meagan and I managed to talk for two whole hours. About everything and nothing. And some other stuff too. And it was probably more fun than pinwheels anyway.

Good news though - I get the next two days off. And what I couldn't do in two weeks of holiday, I'm hoping to make inroads on in two days.

Yep, it's time for cleaning my room: Third time lucky.

My head hurts.

You know how we all like to whinge about how terribly boring pressing seams is? Tonight I spent 4 hours wishing I had some seams that needed pressing because I was doing something that bored me literally to tears. Well, it made my eyes water. Staring at a screen for 4 hours and renaming all your mp3s will do that to you.

Now don't bother putting on a surprised face when I come out and admit that only a small portion of my music collection is legal. I won't bother getting into DRM issues or the difficulties faced by those who don't like either certain file formats or certain media players, because one of us has already been bored to tears today, and while a problem shared is a problem halved, it doesn't make what I would be doing to you any less mean. But I suppose the advantage of using a horrible, nasty program like itunes is that all your mp3s would be formatted the same way. When you download higgledy piggledy from the furthest corners of the internet, that's rarely the case.

The worst part is, I have a correctly titled collection of about 1500 songs. And another 2100 that need sorting. I suspect I would have sorted out about 500 tonight. So it's only gunna take me another 20 or so hours to get them all done.

I really should do it more often, in much the same way that I should do a better job of maintaining my stash, but in much the same way that it's easier to just put half your fabric bits in a cardboard box next to the bench, it seems easier to just pluck out the 3 or 4 songs I'm really into, put them into the main music folder (new folder 2) and leave the rest in the albums folder with all_the_really_annoying_underscores-and_random_18_numbers. But then, you realise it's gotten really bad (2100 songs bad) and you've gotta sort it all out, so it's arrow arrow arrow delete space arrow arrow arrow delete space to get rid of the underscores and make it look like normal text. For 500 songs. Which all need a slightly different combination of arrow arrow delete space arrow arrow delete space.

It used to be much easier, back when I thought 3 gig of internet a month was a lot. I would only download what I really wanted then. Now not only am I downloading whole albums, I'm downloading whole discographies. So I've got 120 songs by the one artist, of which I know, and will maybe listen to, a half a dozen. The rest are there for when, inevitably, someone out in the bar will say "do you have any Meatloaf/Chisel/Sugarland/Lady Antebellum?" followed by naming one of their more obscure tracks that noone in their right mind would have to hand.

But that's okay, because after renaming hundreds of tracks in dozens of folders, I'm not in my right mind any more.

P.S. in quilting news, the big pinwheels are done, so I feel like I'm getting somewhere with the quilting at least, even if I'm not getting anywhere with other stuff.

It's Baaack...

Blogger! You're Back! I Missed You!

Now I'd appreciate it if you never did that to me again. If facebook pulled a stunt like you just did there would be rioting in the streets.

Anyway, forgive and forget, and all that.

Tonight I worked late, so all the stuff I was gunna get done, isn't. No bindings have been touched*, no dishes or hair washed, no floors swept and no jeans put in the dryer.

I did light the fire again though, with more WD40, cause I forgot to buy firelighters.

And all that (not) done, I put some Joe Nichols into the little box that talks to the TV, and I've spent the night listening to country songs I've never heard before but to which I somehow know most of the words. It could be that the lyrics are a bit predictable, or it could be that I have some kind of otherworldy, magical connection to this music. I've also made a start on quilt #50.

My math was all wrong. Well, not all of it. I got the number 24 (the measurement of the big octagon in the centre of each ring) right**, so that's good, but pretty much all my other numbers were too big. Still, that's better than too small, and the maths is a year old, so I suppose it was due for some polish.

Yesterday I was a bit despondent because I couldn't find the second piece of Falling Leaves that I needed and the only place I could find any was Fabric.com, so I ordered 4 of the 10 yards they allegedly had left. Today I found the other bit, and I thought, hey, it's cool, the other stuff will back it and bind it. But still, it was 35 bucks I could have spent on something else, and then tonight I got an email from them saying they only had 3.5 yards left, and it was in three bits.

So I had to quickly make sure my math was all right, or at least make sure I had enough fabric. It seems like I do, assuming I don't fuck anything up from this point on, so do I tell them to cancel the order or do I just accept what they're offering? 1.5 yards are still fairly big pieces, but still. The email says if I don't reply in 24 hours, they'll send it as it is, which is awfully presumptuous of them.

Dunno.

Fabricshack.com also sent me an email, because as well I ordered a heap from them - A couple of binding options for the mingle star quilt and some cute cowboy prints and 15 different shades of blues and greens because I wanna make something like this. Their email said they were out of Kona Cornflower, which I'm totally cool with, since, um, I didn't order any. So yay for that.

And now I have two much anticipated days off. So an even bigger yay for that.


*actually, it got picked up off the cutting mat and moved out of the way, but I don't think that counts.
**though if you go back and look at the picture it says 25, but I realised a month or so ago that that was wrong.